Civil War Confederate Brigadier General. Born at Tuscumbia, Alabama, the son of Pennsylvania parents, he was graduated from West Point in the class of 1854. At the Battle of Chickamauga, on September 20, 1863, he was killed instantly struck by a shell in the chest and his heart was literally torn from his body while examining the cartridge boxes of his men preparatory to an assault. When General Robert E. Lee, who had commanded Deshler in western Virginia early in the war, learned he had been killed, he wrote, "There was no braver soldier in the Confederate army than Deshler." (bio by: Dustin Oliver)